Blueprint Skateboards is a skateboard company set up in 1996 by Alvin Singfield and Dan Magee. Originally only available in the UK, worldwide demand grew alongside the company. Its products were distributed for sale in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia. Originally owned by Joe Burlo, Blueprint and its IP was sold to Max Dufour at Pure Distribution LLC in California.

History

Blueprint was run by Alvin Singfield and Dan Magee and owned by Faze-7 Distribution. Faze-7 began as a skate shop in 1978, in Enfield owned by Joe Burlo. Team Manager Alvin Singfield created Panic Skateboards brand in 1995. Blueprint was formed by him and Dan Magee the following year as a sister brand to Panic. Blueprint was distributed through Faze 7 Distribution in the UK. Faze-7 also owned MI-7 Distribution, a company based in Huntington Beach, California, which handled U.S. distribution of the Blueprint, Panic, and Octagon wheel brands. The original sponsored team riders were : Rob Selley, Mark Baines, Flynn Trotman, Dan Magee, Ewan Bowman and Mike De Geus for Blueprint and Colin Kennedy, Paul Shier, Matt Prichard, Jon Weatherall, Pieter Janssen, Louis Slater and John Cattle for Panic.

Videography

PNC/Blueprint: A Mixed Media

''Released 1996.'' Available on VHS cassette in the UK only. A joint venture with the now defunct Panic Skateboards. The video is considered an important part of UK skateboarding history and documents some of the earliest footage in existence of some of the UK's most historically important skateboard spots. Spots which include Central Milton Keynes Bus Station and the South Bank Under-croft in Central London. A Mixed Media sold several thousand copies.

PNC/Blueprint: Anthems

''Released 1997.'' Anthems sold worldwide in both

PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a color encoding system for analog television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...

(European format) and

NTSC NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170. In 1953, a second ...

(United States Format). This release also saw the combining of Blueprint Skateboards with the now defunct Panic Skateboards.

Build and Destroy Promo

''Released 1999.'' Promo video included at the end of 'Through the Eyes of Ruby'. This was originally meant to be Blueprint's 411 Industry section.

Waiting For The World

''Released 2000.'' Available on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

cassette only. Waiting For The World really defined Blueprint as a team and opened everyone's eyes to the talent of the riders and what the UK has to offer.

First Broadcast

''Released 2001.'' Available on

cassette only, this release further displayed the skills and diversity of the team. This release also featured sections from Unabomber Skateboards and Organic Skateboards (Now Landscape Skateboards) as well as many of the companies friends.

The Belong Tour

''Released 2002.'' Available on

cassette only. This release covers the UK tour of the entire Blueprint team and is perhaps the least fondly remembered of their productions. The soundtrack includes tracks by

Elliott Smith Steven Paul Smith (August 6, 1969 – October 21, 2003), known as Elliott Smith, was an American musician and singer-songwriter. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and lived much of his life in Portland, Oregon, whe ...

. The highlight of this video are the offcut clips of the team and friends street skating at the end of the tape.

Lost and Found

''Released 2005.'' Available in

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

format. The team travelled over

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

over two years in order to film their video parts. Lost And Found was then premiered to nearly 1000 skaters in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

on March 12, 2005. The following 2-disc DVD set was released shortly after. This DVD features the following riders: Danny Brady, Neil Smith, Scott Palmer, Ben Grove, Paul Shier, Vaughan Baker, Michael Wright, Colin Kennedy, Chewy Cannon, Mark Baines and Nick Jensen. Stephan Morgan, Tuukka Korhonen, Ste Thompson and Conhuir Lynn are featured in the credits. Paul Carter, John Fisher and John Rattray have

easter egg Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are decorated for the Christian holiday of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are commonly used during the season of Eastertide (Easter season). The ...

sections.

Make Friends With Marty

''Released 2010.'' Online promotional clip, welcoming US pro rider Marty Murawski to the team and showcasing clips from the rest of the team. This clip acted as a teaser to the next full-length Blueprint DVD release, 'Make Friends With The Colour Blue'. Already-filmed footage of Marty couldn't be used in the forthcoming DVD due to camera compatibility issues, so this was a useful outlet for the footage.

Make Friends With The Colour Blue

''Released 2010.'' Available in

format. With the addition of two US riders (Marty Murawski and Kevin Coakley) introduced the brand officially to a new US audience. The resulting DVD, 'Make Friends With The Colour Blue' (commonly abbreviated to 'MFWTCB'), features a truly international line-up of team riders and is perhaps the most polished Blueprint production yet.

References

External links

Trashfilter.com editorial article
A review and analysis of 'Make Friends With The Colour Blue' on Trashfilter.com Skateboarding companies {{Skateboarding